1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a checkerlike game embodying a game board having board magnets therein and movable game pieces having piece magnets therein and involves interactions between the board magnets and the piece magnets.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known to place bar magnets and magnetic pieces in permanently closed boxlike structures. Structures exist wherein laterally spaced magnets have their poles orthogonal to a permanently closed housing. This is exemplified by magnetic credit cards and the techniques developed for their manufacture. See U.S. Pat. No. 3,651,312 issued on Mar. 21, 1972 to W. W. Barney.
Barney does not disclose a housing which can be reopened. Moreover, Barney does not address the problem of reprogramming the positions of a plurality of magnets with respect to a fixed peripheral geometry for the housing, a credit card.
As known, a magnetic game comprises a flat board having a SINGLE playing surface and checkerlike playing pieces. The board is square and is divided into a plurality of playing squares in a checkerboard fashion with squares arranged in rows, columns, and diagonals. Alternate diagonals of squares are colored differently. One set of alternate diagonals of squares, the playing squares, has under EACH square a bar magnet with either an N-pole or an S-pole proximate to the playing surface. Players of a game on this board having found games less and less interesting and appealing as the game is repeated because they tend to learn the relative positions of opposite polarity squares of the board. This information is acquired when a piece is not repelled by one square but is repelled by another. See U.S. Pat. No. 2,819,904 issued on Jan. 14, 1958 to W. M. Nelson et al.
Such games, as known, are played with cylindrical playing pieces which have two flat surfaces. These pieces have magnets imbedded therein without regard or reference to a color difference on the flat surfaces. Each magnet has an S-pole and an N-pole. In one portion of the playing pieces, the S-poles are adjacent first colored surfaces. In a remaining portion, the N-poles are adjacent first colored surfaces.
The board, as known, is flat and has a magnet located under each square which is used for playing. One symmetric portion of the board, for example, the alternate diagonals, is used for play. This portion may be colored red, for example, and an unplayable portion may be colored black, for example. The board magnets are located under each square with either an S-pole or an N-pole adjacent thereto. The S-poles and N-poles are arranged in a symmetric pattern. See U.S. Pat. No. 2,819,904 supra. One problem with this arrangement is that when a face of the cylindrical playing piece of one polarity lands on a square having underneath a pole of the same polarity the piece is not only repelled but is either translocated to another square or to its curved wall. Thus, the player must manually flip over the playing piece. This is an annoying inconvenience which substantially slows the pace of the game.
Another problem with the game as known is the permanent site of each individual magnet in the board. This lack of flexibility and lack of programmability for the board reduces the commercial value of the game. What is needed is a variation of this game wherein the degree of skill necessary to play the game may be selected by selection of a particular program for the board, i.e., a pattern for the various combinations of S-poles and N-poles of board magnets which may be placed adjacent a surface of the board.
Flexibility in programming is not itself the only problem to be solved. A means is needed to quickly change the pattern of the board without the necessity of rearranging individual magnets within the board. An automatic or semi-automatic means is needed for changing the pattern. Considerable consumer interest is expressed for those games wherein several elements of a game or toy are remotely changed by one manual movement.